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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28127250">pacem pati non potuistis</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/dirtybinary/pseuds/dirtybinary'>dirtybinary</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Ancient History RPF, Classical Greece and Rome History &amp; Literature RPF, Punic Wars RPF</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Epistolary, M/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-11 00:49:00</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,956</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28127250</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/dirtybinary/pseuds/dirtybinary</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Two old foes exchange letters across battle lines.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Scipio Africanus/Hannibal Barca</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>34</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>91</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Yuletide 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>pacem pati non potuistis</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prinzenhasserin/gifts">Prinzenhasserin</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Happy Yuletide, Prinzenhasserin! I hope you enjoy reading these enemy shenanigans as much as I enjoyed writing them.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>I.</strong>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>CORNELIUS SCIPIO, PROCOS., SENDS HUMBLE SALUTATIONS TO HANNIBAL BARCA.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>You will have heard by now that I have landed troops in Africa. Or — and I hope I do not flatter myself — you will have heard of me, at least.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I put in last month at a headland called Cape Bon, and I wondered why you were not there to greet me with your army. This place is as beautiful as its name makes out: all meadowland and fresh springs and orchards budding with peaches, and hills upon hills scrolling away to the sea. Even the wildflowers by the roadside fill me with unspeakable joy. The day I first held a battle line against you I told myself that someday I would lead an army up to the walls of Carthage, and now—now, Hannibal, here I am, and you are still holed up somewhere in Bruttium with no food and no money and bored out of your mind, I expect. Why not come home? Come and show me around — or perhaps </span>
  <em>
    <span>I</span>
  </em>
  <span> will show you around. My legions are fast growing familiar with these lands as if they were our own back gardens, and I am told you have not set foot here since you were a stripling.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Come, Hannibal. Bring your army, if you still have one. Come and play.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>* * *</span>
</p><p>
  <span>HANNIBAL BARCA, </span>
  <em>
    <span>RAB MAHANET</span>
  </em>
  <span>, WISHES HEALTH AND LONG LIFE TO PUBLIUS CORNELIUS SCIPIO.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I have heard of you, all right. I have, in fact, heard of little else but you these last years, and so I have come to see for myself what manner of adversary you are. If my sources have oversold your talents I shall be quite disappointed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Of course you find my fatherland beautiful. Your forebears thought the same, back in the first war. The consul Regulus, for instance, had a most agreeable stay in Carthage, when he thought it a fine idea to invade Africa and found himself a prisoner of ours; and so too your own great-uncle Scipio the Ass (sixteen years in Italy and I still do not understand Roman nomenclature) when we sank his fleet off Lipara. I am sure your visit will be no less fruitful, and endeared by no less hospitality.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>* * *</span>
</p><p>CORNELIUS SCIPIO PROCOS. IMP. SENDS MANY GREETINGS TO HANNIBAL BARCA.</p><p>
  <span>Words cannot express my delight! You flatter me, and you invoke my dearest great-uncle Ass — gods rest his soul and his behind — and you are here in Africa with me! You will not find me disappointing, I hope, but it is hard to judge a man by his letters. I have enclosed, therefore, two persons of unknown name and dubious provenance that my sentries discovered snooping around my palisades last night. Naturally I gave them the full tour, in case they were representatives of yours. I do hope they tell you all about me.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Hannibal, Hannibal, time is wasting away on our witticisms, and by time I mean my proconsular imperium. I can only guess at which third-rate commander will take over my affairs here next year, but surely you do not want to concede (for concede you will) to so boring an opponent? You deserve better! Come and fight me, or surrender to me, it makes no difference; I promise I shall be quite merciful.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>* * *</span>
</p><p>
  <span>HANNIBAL BARCA WISHES HEALTH, WISDOM AND RESTRAINT, AMONG OTHER THINGS, TO PUBLIUS CORNELIUS SCIPIO.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I too am overjoyed. Not only did you discover Hanno and Hanno, you sent them back from their scouting trip in perfect health. (Though I rather hoped you would dispose of them for me. I found their company odious.)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I have no wish to fight or to surrender, but I do wish to meet you. I will be at a town called Zama the week of the solar eclipse. Let us parley, and bicker about which of us the omen is for.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>II.</strong>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>SCIPIO SENDS GREETINGS TO HANNIBAL.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>You’ll be surprised, I expect, to receive this letter so soon after we made a bloody mess of that battlefield. I wasn’t done with our conversation, you know. Yes, yes, I was running out of water and you were running out of food (and time, and hope, and so many other things) and we had to fight our battle before everyone deserted, but still. That was far too short a parley after far too long a war. And now I have to sail for Rome, and it doesn’t seem right to take leave of Carthage without first taking leave of you.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>By the time you read this, the peace terms will have been ratified by my Senate and yours. You will find them harsh, but — I hope — not unjust. I know what you expect, what any general expects after a defeat (though I am only speculating, as, you see, I have never been defeated), that my people will try to imprison you and wreak some dreadful vengeance on your city — and you know I have plenty of colleagues who would like nothing better. But I have no intention of harming Carthage, or you, and I will prevent anyone who tries.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>You did all you could at Zama. There is nothing I would have done differently.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>* * *</span>
</p><p>
  <span>HANNIBAL BARCA WISHES HEALTH, QUITE SINCERELY, TO PUBLIUS CORNELIUS SCIPIO “AFRICANUS”.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Now you </span>
  <em>
    <span>do </span>
  </em>
  <span>flatter yourself, if you believe that anything you do could surprise me. I understand your intentions perfectly. If you wanted to kill me you would have tried by now. Why tell me this?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I can think of plenty that I would have done otherwise at Zama, but our vantage points differ.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>* * *</span>
</p><p>SCIPIO SENDS GREETINGS TO HANNIBAL —</p><p>
  <span>How grandiose a reason does one need for magnanimity? I just wanted to set your mind at ease, so you could put the war behind you, and not rush about trying to start a new one. I can see the appeal, my dear; peacetime is unsettling. But my cantankerous brethren of the Senate will not take kindly to that in the slightest, and it would be so dreadfully embarrassing for the both of us if someone </span>
  <em>
    <span>else</span>
  </em>
  <span> were to conquer you, wouldn’t it?</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Cura ut valeas</span>
  </em>
  <span> — and if you have leisure to write me back, tell me what you would have done different on the battlefield.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>* * *</span>
</p><p>
  <span>HANNIBAL WISHES HEALTH AND MORE TO SCIPIO “AFRICANUS”—</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Peacetime, unsettling? From the man who once said to me, </span>
  <em>
    <span>Prepare for war, for you have found peace intolerable?</span>
  </em>
  <span> But you take my meaning. One must keep busy, somehow. I write in part to forewarn you and your senatorial friends that I mean to run for shofet this fall. I have been too long away. Our warehouses are in shambles, our currency thoroughly debased, and — most heinous of all — there is not one single copy of Anakreon to be found in our libraries; and oh, yes, our ships are on fire, but you knew that already, being the one who fired them. There is a great deal that must be done in Carthage, and no one else with the mind or the stomach to do it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I would not have fought at Zama at all, if such a thing were possible. But as my opponent was embarrassingly eager, I have enclosed some few diagrams of alternative manoeuvres that I would like to have tried.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>* * *</span>
</p><p>
  <span>SCIPIO COS. IMP. LAVISHES GREETINGS UPON HANNIBAL —</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Why, of course you may run for shofet; I grant my permission gladly! I am sure you will be a very good one, for it took no one short of me to conquer you.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Teasing aside, every ship that comes in from the south brings us news of your latest pastime. This week, it seems, you have taken up olive-farming and canal-digging, and throwing corrupt officials in jail. One must keep busy, I know, or one wakes at midnight imagining some attack or other, and tosses in bed till dawn — Hannibal, Hannibal, I know, but step carefully. The Fathers of the State are on edge. Today an especially pugilistic specimen named M. Cato — I don’t expect you have ever heard of him — said he was astonished I had permitted you to live, that every free breath you draw is an affront to the Senate and People of Rome. Cato is, just between us, a bit of an affront in himself, but there are many who agree with him. Don’t make me go over there and defeat you again, because I will, if only so no one else does.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>On a more exciting note: I would have reproached you for the lateness of your reply, but when I saw the enormous treatise you call “some few diagrams” I understood the reason for the delay. O my enemy! Stationing elephants in the rear, so my Numidians could not encircle you — do you truly think that would have made a hair of difference? I send back your sketches with annotations of my own. You were wasted on war, just as peace is wasted on you.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>* * *</span>
</p><p>
  <span>HANNIBAL PERSISTS, AGAINST ALL SENSE, IN WISHING HEALTH TO SCIPIO “AFRICANUS” —</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I am not at leisure to write a lengthy reply (which I shall), but where are the diagrams to explain how, exactly, you mean to defeat me again when you never even got through the walls of Carthage the first time round?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>* * *</span>
</p><p>
  <span>SCIPIO SENDS GREETINGS TO HANNIBAL —</span>
</p><p>
  <span>You’re right, I have no diagrams, so in lieu of that I enclose a rather excellent manual on siegeworks by Xenophon that I am sure you will find edifying.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>While I await your latest treatise — written in Homeric Greek, I expect, with meter and rhyme to match — I have a bit of gossip for you. Those corrupt magistrates you put in jail must be very angry indeed. Today we received a delegation of elders from your adirim, accusing you of secret dealings with that Seleucid peacock Antiochus, and urging us to come see for ourselves if you were plotting a new war with Rome. I know the taste of desperation, I know the smell of slander, and I know it will not matter one whit to my fellow senators whether this is true or not. You plagued us for sixteen years, old friend. Not even your death will satisfy them. I say again, have a care.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Peacetime grows ever more intolerable. If you have found a way to sleep through the night, you must share it with me.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>* * *</span>
</p><p>
  <span>GREETINGS TO HANNIBAL.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I pray this gets to you in time — the Senate has dispatched an embassy to Carthage with full authority to demand your arrest. What did I say? There is only so much I can do for you.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Run, my friend, run, run, run.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>You haven’t written me back. I take it your civic duties have kept you busy. Or perhaps you would rather not exchange letters with your conqueror, and no one can reproach you for that.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>III.</strong>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Africanus,</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I am at Ephesus with Antiochus, as you must have heard by now. If your colleagues are so feeble-hearted that even the peacetime dodderings of an old man are too much to stomach, then I can only do them the kindness of buckling my sword back on.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I have been a lousy letter-writer, I know. There were too many eyes interested in my correspondence, those last months in Carthage, and I didn’t want you to come under scrutiny. I reckon this M. Cato of yours would have found our letters rather too intriguing. I know your Senate will hound me to death, and I know still more acutely that you have worked all these years to prevent them, though I don’t profess to understand why. You are a riddle, Publius Scipio — one that I could solve over and over in a hundred different ways, and yet never untangle in its entirety.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I have not found a way to sleep through the night, but I </span>
  <em>
    <span>have </span>
  </em>
  <span>found a new war, which you must admit is the next best thing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I did not need your warning, but I did need the Xenophon. The Ephesians are very good at building libraries, not so much at filling them. Your letters are all I brought with me to read.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>* * *</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Greetings to Hannibal. If you are well — and I do mean this — then I am well.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Old man”? Why, what twisted Punic rhetoric is this? I swear I did not see one strand of white in your hair when we met. I know </span>
  <em>
    <span>I </span>
  </em>
  <span>was young, but we cannot all be Alexanders. (Some of us are definitely more </span>
  <em>
    <span>invictus</span>
  </em>
  <span> than others.) And you worry too much. I couldn’t care less what anyone thinks of me, if it upsets them that I write you letters in my spare time. Cato is determined to engineer my downfall one way or another; if it isn’t you it will be something else. Rome will cast me out just as soon as it has no more use for me, like Carthage did to you, like Athens did to Alcibiades, like any city does to anyone who sets their mind to anything of worth.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Forsooth, I don’t mean to sound so bitter, but I can’t be arsed to rip this up and start the letter over.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I have grown very possessive of you, old friend. Who can blame me? From our very first battle I devoted my life to studying you. I say “battle”, as if it were something grand — it was just a little skirmish by a river called the Ticinus. You won’t remember it now, it was so long ago. Do you know, that day I made some comment to my father about your tactical use of terrain and weather, and he only said, “That piddling infant has no business tallying up a quaestor’s accounts, let alone leading armies” — so I will always think of you as young, Hannibal, for so you were when we first met.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>That is to say: I alone conquered you. Let no other mediocre loudmouth lay hands on you in hopes of some cheap glory.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I hope you are well. I hope you have found some way to be happy. I gave thanks when I heard you were safe. I am a simple riddle, with a simple answer.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>(An addendum while the courier is one foot out the door: I really must try and talk some sense into you. Antiochus dreams of liberating Great Hellas from Roman tyranny, or something in that vein, and I am sure it sounds perfectly splendid, but as a general he is nowhere near your calibre. I would be ashamed to consort with him if I were you.)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>* * *</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Africanus,</span>
</p><p>
  <span>You would be ashamed to consort with Antiochus, but not with me? True, he requires much nursemaiding, but so does an olive plantation or a silver mine. I must have </span>
  <em>
    <span>some</span>
  </em>
  <span> amusement. We received a gaggle of envoys from your Senate in court the other day, of the loud and mediocre ilk you mentioned, and I wondered where on earth you were. Surely you know by now it takes a different class of Roman to hold my attention. Why tease me like this?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I remember the Ticinus. Of course I remember. No one would let me live it down, when we found out that the lad who led that reckless charge to save his father was the same little gadfly wreaking so much havoc for us in Spain. (It tickles me, imagining you as a boy fresh out of drills: sailing to Massilia to confront me with your father’s army, only to find me long gone into the Alps, and having to chase me all the way back to Italy. I feel I understand so many things about you now.)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>You may be as bitter as you like. But if it consoles you, exile is not so bad. I am well: homesick, but I have been homesick a long time now, and not for Carthage. As for happiness — “War has sealed her into the bowels of a cavern, and piled a heap of stones against it.” Bring me a shovel when you visit Ephesus, and perhaps I shall dig her out.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>* * *</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Hannibal,</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Why, what is this? Are you inviting me to Ephesus? Great Jove, somewhere poor Antiochus has a twitching eyelid and doesn’t know why. What sedition! What perfidia! </span>
  <em>
    <span>And</span>
  </em>
  <span> you are reading Aristophanes — how terribly unwarlike of you. I am well acquainted with the envoys in question, and I agree wholeheartedly with your assessment. I would have led that delegation myself, but I know too well how incorrigible you are. No war of yours can be averted. What use is it, sending embassies to coax and threaten? You will fight to your last breath, and then you will rise as a ghost and fight some more, and I would be disappointed if you did not, because that is my favourite thing about you.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>If you wish to see me, though, I shall go. In war one has no shortage of comrades, but peacetime one has to bear alone; unless, like Narcissus, you find your soul mirrored in a pool somewhere, and you cling to that reflection, for it knows you as you know yourself.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>You know me, Hannibal. And you know I would never leave you alone.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Tell me again if you want to see me. Tell me if I may share in your exile. I shall bring shovels, I shall bring maps, I shall bring all that I wanted to say to you at Zama and more.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>* * *</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Africanus,</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Of course I am inviting you. We have a war to talk about, and more terrifyingly, the peace that will come afterwards, and how we shall spend it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I want to see you. I want to read Aristophanes with you. Like you once said — come and play.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Team "They Faked Their Deaths And Ran Away Together".</p><p>ETA after reveals: <a href="http://enemyofrome.tumblr.com">@enemyofrome</a> on tumblr // <a href="http://twitter.com/valeaidawrites">@valeaidawrites</a> on twitter -- come say hi all ye fellow hannipio goblins</p></blockquote></div></div>
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